With the ever-increasing popularity of computers and personal communication devices, the number and diversity of devices used on corporate network is rapidly growing. For example, while corporate networks may have been previously limited to stationary computers and notebooks, now smart phones, tablets and other portable communication user devices are being used by employees alongside stationary computers and notebooks in the network. It is therefore becomes difficult for an administrator to manually manage so many user devices.
One of the techniques of automation of management of user devices connected to the corporate network is a sorting or classification of devices in accordance with certain features or criteria (e.g., the type of a device, the user of the device, the software installed on the device, and so on), with later use of such sorting to solve various network administration problems.
Some known device management techniques allow automatic assignment of network policies to user devices based on their classification. Other known techniques allow automatic determination of the number of licenses for software that performs various administrative tasks. However, these management techniques do not provide efficient response to changes in the number of user devices connected to the network or changes in the configuration of the devices, or an optimal protection of the user devices in a network with a limited set of licenses.